PROGRAM NOTES

Haydn had heard Handel's Messiah and Israel in Egypt during his first trip to England in the early 1790s and was deeply impressed. At the “Hallelujah” Chorus he famously wept: “He is the master of us all!” His London manager, Salomon, asked him to write an oratorio and gave him a libretto on The Creation of the World.

Back in Vienna, Haydn was encouraged to compose the oratorio by the court librarian, Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who had founded a society to sponsor private performances of Handel's oratorios. Swieten was a nobleman, diplomat, poet, and sometime composer who was also friends with Mozart and his wife, as well as C.P.E. Bach, and to whom Beethoven would dedicate his First Symphony. The Baron translated into German the libretto Haydn had brought back from England and fashioned it into The Creation.

The success of The Creation in 1798 led Haydn and Swieten to collaborate on a second oratorio, The Seasons, based on James Thomson's popular poem. Swieten not only had to retranslate the work into German, but also to pare down the length of the poem, to interpolate brief sections from other sources, and to write the final verses for the oratorio on “the Last Trumpet,” the meaning of life, and eternal afterlife. Swieten's musical association paid Haydn 600 ducats for the new work.

The two oratorios are similar in their view of the wonders of Nature and reverence toward the Creator. Haydn was a devout Catholic and had recently written important masses. A religious character, tone painting, and the pastoral tradition all pervade this secular work.

The humanist, 18th-century view of the pastoral is evident in the choice of three simple country folk—Simon, Hanne, and Lucas—tell the story, rather than the angels in The Creation. Each season begins with a tone poem and ends with a chorus. A rousing chorus including a hunting song with horn calls, another celebration with dancing peasants and drinking, references to “noble toil,” and—in a foreshadowing of the third movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony—a loud thunderstorm all appear. Haydn evidently remarked that his whole life had been spent being industrious and that this was the first time, in “Autumn,” that he was ever asked to write a chorus in praise of toil. “Winter,” like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, begins in C Minor and ends in C Major (the same key in which God speaks in The Creation, and where the analog from Chaos to Light is similar).

Word painting abounds: for example, the second part, “Summer,” opens with the portrayal of a sunrise, complete with a bird song in the oboe, while later rustic horn calls are heard, a drought is symbolized by muted strings and thunder expressed by timpani, and at the end croaking frogs, quail, and crickets all appear. “Autumn” boasts a hunt with horn signals, dogs barking, and a bird shot by a hunter, as well as a drinking scene.

Charles Rosen wrote, “The Seasons and The Creation are descriptions of the entire universe as Haydn knew it.” He continued: “The greatness of the two oratorios lies in their range of expression, and for once Haydn equaled Mozart's breadth if not his control. The Seasons makes an unabashed appeal for popular favor; as early as the fourth number in ‘Spring,' Haydn shrewdly quotes the tune from the “Surprise” Symphony that had become so popular. But this is not the only allusion to Haydn's previous works; the closeness of ‘Sei nun gnädig,' No. 6, to the slow movement of Symphony No. 98 is almost as candid as the quotation from the Andante of the Surprise in ‘Spring.'”

Haydn had spent two years on The Seasons. “Winter,” however, seems to have reminded the aging Haydn of his own declining years. Perhaps we should view its somber orchestral introduction as Haydn's farewell to music itself. Indeed, illness threatened but failed to postpone the premiere. Soon after the successful premiere in Vienna, April 24, 18 01, Haydn became too weak to compose.

“When he finished it, he was written out. The last years of Haydn's life, with all his success, comfort, and celebrity, are among the saddest in music. More moving than the false pathos of a pauper's grave for Mozart (who was buried there only because Swieten advised the economy to Constanza) is the figure of Haydn filled with musical ideas which were struggling to escape, as he himself said; he was too old and weak to go to the piano and submit to the discipline of working them out,” according to Rosen.

Haydn wrote Clementi: “In the meantime I inform you that the music to my Seasons has been received with the same unanimous approval as The Creation; indeed many go so far as to prefer it, on account of its [greater] variety.” And to Pleyel he wrote that The Seasons had enjoyed an “unparalleled success.”

Sir Roger Norrington feels that The Seasons “is a beautiful piece, even better than The Creation. The orchestra is perfect and the singing parts are perfect. The music praises itself.” James Webster suggests, “Taken together, The Creation and The Seasons represent the history of the world, from the beginning of time and the Creation of Light, to the Day of Judgment and then the end of time.”

-Andrea Olmstead
Ms. Olmstead has been the Society's Christopher Hogwood Research Fellow since 2005. The author of three books on Roger Sessions and of Juilliard: A History, she has published numerous articles and CD liner notes, produced recordings, and taught Music History for 32 years.

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